The goal for my room as a kid was for no portion of the walls to be visible. Every square inch was to be covered by the literal visual manifiestation of an athlete and their nickname. I haven’t been in any young boys rooms in the last couple of decades (swear) so I’m not sure if they have their equivalent (Fatheads, maybe?), but these posters are pretty much my prepubescent years in a microcosm.
Never mind that I wasn’t even a fan of a lot of the players I had posters for. Never mind that I didn’t get half of the references because I wasn’t allowed to see whatever movie or TV show the nickname was pirated from. Never mind that they’re pretty much all nonsensical and corny as hell. Back then I was certain their wasn’t anything cooler than having the Bash Brothers staring back at me from my wall (if you didn’t have that poster we couldn’t be friends, true story).
So it was a big bucket of unexpected nostalgia to the face when I was pointed to Colt Rane’s collection of the most popular and retroactively hilarious 80’s sports posters. I’m still a little shaken by it, and as a grown @ss man I now have so many questions I didn’t know to ask back then. Why did Karl Malone think a basketball would fit into a mailbox? Did Elway and Chuck Person ever have a Rifleman standoff? Is James Worthy taking new clients? Did 80’s dads not sense the homoerotic undertones of the Bermuda Triangle?
If you need me I’ll be spending the rest of the day imaging a LTerminator-Mad Mac Aliens Vs. Predators-like battle to the finish.Colt Rane via The High Definite